Muir Russell and the Team

A webpage on the Muir Russell Inquiry materialized today here. I learned of this development from Bishop Hill’s blog here.

The work plan is described here, saying that they plan to operate “openly and transparently”. They didn’t mention whether they had interviewed Jones, Briffa, Osborn, but, from talking to an English reporter, it’s my understanding that they’ve already done so.

The Issues Paper demonstrates an amusingly tin ear to the context of the CRU controversy. Of all possible terms to describe themselves, the Muir Russell committee refers to themselves as “the Team”.🙂

….. the Team stresses that it has formed no view on whether they are fair or justified. …. the Team is not adopting those issues as its own criticisms.
3. The Team‟s approach is to distill the questions and criticisms into the broad questions set out below. Using its own enquiries and experience, it has added questions about the handling and dissemination of data, including the response to FOI requests.
4. The Team will invite CRU and other parts of UEA to respond in writing to these questions, and will follow up those responses as required. The Team expect the CRU to provide original documentary evidence to support its responses.
5. The Team invites those with an interest in the matter to comment on this Issues paper. The Team stresses that its remit does not involve re-evaluation of the scientific conclusions of the CRU work, still less a reappraisal of the scientific debate about the existence and suggested causes of global warming.

Bishop Hill observes that, although the inquiry was formed on December 3, the public has eleven working days to make a submission. Early news reports: BBC Times

I’ve taken a first look at the Issues Paper, in which they say that they

distill the questions and criticisms into the broad questions set out below

The only information on the “distillation” process is that it was “using its own enquiries and experience”. One wonders exactly what those “enquiries and experience” consisted of. They haven’t talked to me (or sent me notice that they are seeking submissions.) Nor has anyone contacted me to say that “enquiries” had reached them. What were these “enquiries”?

The “distillation” in respect to “manipulation or suppression” of data is to four questions.

The first question is about the divergence problem. Having said that their “remit” doesn’t involve re-evaluation of the “scientific conclusions” of CRU work, the divergence questions are mainly scientific questions – some of them are ill-posed.

The second question focuses on an email of June 4, 2003 that’s barely made the Climate Audit radar screen – about “containing” the MWP, where the term is used in a quite different context than the Deming email. The third subquestion in this item looks scientific rather than conduct related.

The third question relates to the “trick” email. The questions show no evidence of having understood the context provided to the trick email by Jean S and myself.

The fourth question is about temperature data sets and whether they’ve been “selected preferentially”.

Question 5 is about peer review. They mention three blocking incidents out of all the possible incidents; they do not mention biased positive reviews.

Question 6 is about data access.

Question 7 is about keeping records of datasets, algorithms and software.

Question 8 is about FOI requests.

Update: UEA today announced another inquiry – this one into the scientific issues. Nothing was announced about who would be on this new inquiry, other than that the Royal Society will help them choose assessors.

I think it’s unfair to assume “the establishment” has any pre-determined position. Even if we accept for a moment that the likes of Jim Norton constitute “the establishment”, why would “the establishment” be particularly pre-disposed to provide a whitewash service for a minor professor at what they probably see as a jumped-up Polytechnic? It’s not as though “the establishment” went to UEA, sends its children to UEA or indeed can find Norwich on a map. Given the choice between taking a phone call from academics at a provincial university that is not merely post-1900 but post-war, and taking a call from Nigel Lawson, who would the establishment take more seriously?

But that’s by the by, because that doesn’t look like a panel of “the establishment” to me. It’s a bunch of provincial academics, a retired telephone salesman, and a journalist (stop press: who has resigned) (disclaimer: Peter Clarke has I think co-authored some papers with a friend of my parents). In academic terms, London is provincial. If you were The Establishment, the whole panel looks very NQOCD, very bourgeois at best.

So it’s not The Establishment racing to protect The Establishment, it’s a bunch of academics from upmarket older provincial universities (Edinburgh, UCL) investigating a bunch of academics from a distinctly less upmarket, distinctly less old university that hasn’t even got a physics department. There’ll be snobbery and class in the outcome, but it won’t be “The Establishment”, because neither Oxford nor Cambridge are either being investigated nor represented on the panel.

Steve, Where does it say the Team will write to you? You ain’t the Queen, mate.
Get on with making your submission. You can raise your complaints through the normal complaints procedure of the University as you could have done on any issue in the time you have been blogging in this subject. If you do so the complaint will wait on the deliberations of the Team. Alternatively you may make your submissions to the Team.

Mr Mosher, What special talents and resources are needed here? Jones gets complaints that stand up about FOIA and the “trick”. Anything else? briffa should get done on the delayed release of data and data manipulation – Yamal. Anything else?

The police investigation is not completed but the review panel has already determined the emails were ‘hacked’. They do not even qualify the statement by writing ‘posssibly hacked. Is this a case of mind made up or a sop to the CRU people ?

The emails in question use the term ‘Mike’s Nature Trick’ to describe a data manipulation technique which many feel is dishonest and goes against good scientific practice.

So when they convene a panel to investigate the claim they turn to an editor of a journal whose reputation will be tarnished if the panel ruled that ‘Mike’s Nature Trick’ is, in fact, dishonest.

There are probably more obvious ways to scream out to the world that this panel has already made up its mind to whitewash and the ‘public investigation’ is sham. However, I can’t think of any right now.

It is much too early to be negative about the outcomes of this investigation. Jones will be nailed for FOIA infractions. The scientific stuff needs to be spelled out as clearly as possible by as many interested parties as possible. Enough scientists saying it is not good practice to manipulate data and hide the results will have some force, particularly if those on thhis blog can state with confidence to the Team the names and positions of those who object.

The panel is a sham. The outcome is predetermined. Jones will be cleared like Mann was. If Muir Russell was interested in having an honest investigation he would not have formed of team of people whose previous public statements make it clear that they have already made up their mind.

This does not look to me like the set of questions one would ask if the plan was a whitewash. If I were going to ensure a whitewash I would ask things like, “Do any of the inadvertent errors and occasionally intemperate wording choices in the illegally-hacked emails among the world’s top climate scientists raise any serious doubts about the overwhelming scientific evidence for global warming?”

The long list of questions they have posed contains an impressive amount of detail already, so they have obviously been researching things in some detail thus far. The specifics also help in planning what to write. They open a lot of doors where the prima facie reading of the preamble and the questions indicate that they want to nail the issues as exactly as possible. They’ve got their shovels, now they want to be shown where the bodies are buried.

It has a very different feel to it so far than the NAS panel, where the government’s questions were pretty specific but the NAS Chair rewrote them into generic vagaries. This time the government supplied vague questions and the panel has made them specific.

At some point some high level scientists in the field will have to defect from the consensus to save some credibility going forward. That is when things will get really fun, and maybe science can advance in a meaningful way. It has been amazing to me the extent to which the wagons have been circled to this point. Possibly because the American main stream media is not covering the story(s).

a) Their job description and responsibilities are relevant — they may have done (or not done) things which are required (or forbidden). They may have overstepped their responsibilities in their actions — or the opposite.

b) Confidentiality / NDA agreements from an important part of a researchers life in spelling out the obligations to keep confidential or share data. Usually these documents have a set of definitions — including private, secret, public domain etc, and how to handle information as it moves down the secrecy scale.

c) Data exchange/purchase/sale/trade agreements need to be revealed so that obligations are clear. If they don’t exist of course there is perceived to be no obligations and the data is “free” or unencumbered. If their are agreements they need to specify at what point data becomes “work product or results” — which can be distributed as the researcher sees fit. As a corollary to this point, they should be examining if agreements were created on the fly to forestall release of data because they did not wish to release data — this would be an abuse of position, and I think this came to light with the agreements from Spain — which is why I raise this issue.

d) Research and Joint/venture and data/results sharing should be examined as well. They may have clauses which require or prevent sharing of data and results. These agreements may or may not reflect policy and accepted practice. They could also be used as reasons or excuses for withholding of data which should be made public.

e) Commercial agreements — this speaks for itself. For example CRU has stated that they have funding from Oil Companies (BP, Shell? I believe were listed on their web site at one point). There could be obligations to provide first review and an obligation to withhold certain conclusions or data based on these agreements. The potential for private/commercial wealth or gain is enormous and must be considered.

f) Funding agreements should be examined to see if there are pre-suppositions in their terms of reference. For example if a funding agreement asks that research be done to determine how something affects climate change — then that is what you will get. They were not asked to examine “if”…

Examining the emails and the circumstances around them without looking at contractual obligations — employment, research and commercial will never reveal the whole story.

The above is not the whole story but expansion of a five minute “back of the napkin” summary after reading the PDF “Issues for Examination”. They are from the perspective of writing, researching enforcing and reviewing these types of documents for some years now. I know that other people who have run research programs may have very different views on what is appropriate — or not!

Hopefully this will give some a few thoughts to chew upon.

My conclusion. They created some good questions. Still lots of room for a whitewash though as per above comments.

For my money, i agree with the good dr McKitrick. Objectives 1 and 3 lend themselves to specific, and verifiable issues, where cru will have some explaining to do. Just in terms of best practice, was CRU following best practice with their Nature paper on chinese UHI, which our host and keenan have exposed ? It certainly looks like a very strange way to talk about ‘few, if any, station moves’.

i think the difficulty could be that the panel will have to deal with so many possible issues, which are each so technical and involved, that they will be heavily dependent on cru for interpretation. The distinction between inappropriate and appropriate data manipulation could easily be a large gray area.

Channel 4 news reports he gave a briefing to a Chinese radio station that there was nothing to answer for within the climategate emails. Caught only the last 30 secs but his briefing could have been made in nov.

You have to wonder whether Campbell was put on to the Team for the sole purpose of resigning on day one, so that the start of the review could be kicked into the long grass whilst they find a replacement.

Perhaps I have watched too many “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister”!

Well I can’t see one independent member in the list. Royal Soc = global warming, Nature = global warming, government office = global warming and chairman = university. Where is the independence?

Says the Civil servant … “They were selected on the basis that they have no prejudicial interest in climate change and climate science and for the contribution they can make to the issues of the review.”
By whom? Gordon Brown ? The chancelor of UEA ?

I am sorry but I feel you will be disappointed. I lived in the UK for most of my life. The culture is one of ‘old boys’, nudge nudge wink wink. Always has been, always will be and under Gordon Brown that has become even more pronounced.

This will be a whitewash, garanteed. I hope I’m wrong but I doubt it. The government has been dropping big hints recently on what the outcome should be and so has the university and neither of them would have done that if they thought the outcome would go against their wishes. University today “The science has not changed”, The minister “The science has not changed”.

The issues document lists questions addressed to “You”. As I read through I was thinking “this is addressed to Briffa — this is addressed to Jones — “ and so on. But “You” turns out to be an odd individual. It iconsistsof CRU and other parts of UEA.

“4. The Team will invite CRU and other parts of UEA to respond in writing to these questions, and will follow up those responses as required. ”

It may well be that no individuals will give accounts of their personal actions, but a single corporate response will be given on behalf of CRU.

It’s also clear that this is an “ad hoc” enquiry, it’s not part of any disciplinary proceedings. Disciplinary proceedings could, of course, result from any admissions made to the enquiry. I’d be interested to know if UAE has undertaken that no disciplinary proceedings will be based on any evidence given by members of staff to the enquiry. If not, what incentive is there for staff to give anything other than exculpatory submissions or indeed any submissions at all.

This set of people are calling themselves ‘the Team’? And they are out to investigate another “Team”, or atleast some members of it? We all know how wordplay can disintegrate meaning. This is beyond credulous.

If they do stick to the Team terminology, it will create a divide between the skeptics, the AGWers and the lay community at large who understand very clearly who is being referred to, by “the team”, and the authors of the report. You’ll then have two sets of people who refer to completely different things using the same term.

How can anyone discuss the Muir-Wood investigation after that? Secondly, if the investigators call themselves the team, what term would they use for “the” team?

I do not believe for one moment, that this is not deliberate.

Tokyo Nambu: Yet to see a more spectacularly laconic underestimation of Climategate.🙂

“it’s a bunch of academics from upmarket older provincial universities (Edinburgh, UCL) investigating a bunch of academics from a distinctly less upmarket, distinctly less old university that hasn’t even got a physics department”

I just spent some time perusing the cce website. Other than the fact that Campbell still appears as a member of “The Team”, I do see some good news … and some (probably) bad news. From where I’m sitting, the long list of questions they have framed appears to cover considerable ground.

The one question I did not see was something along the lines of: “Why did you ask colleagues to delete any correspondence pertaining to AR4?” (and appropriate follow-up questions). But I digress …

The Review’s job is to determine if there is evidence of poor scientific practice which could call their research into question; whether they followed University and statutory FOI procedures properly; and whether they should have better procedures for managing their research and keeping their data safe.

[…]

Why have you only given people two and a half weeks to make submissions to the Review?

Everyone likely to make a submission to the Review already has a view on the issues within its remit, and the hacked emails are in the public domain. The Review team is also keen to ensure that preliminary conclusions are presented to UEA in the Spring, as has been requested.

Has the Review team actually read all of the hacked emails yet? Will you have access to the whole CRU email record?

We have read a substantial number of the hacked emails, but not yet all. If the submissions received point to reasonable wider concerns, we will follow the trail where it leads.

[…]

Does the Review have a Freedom of Information policy? Will evidence submitted to the Review be made public? Will the Review’s minutes and correspondence be published?

The Team will operate as openly and transparently as possible. It is establishing a website which will eventually display all of the evidence received, correspondence, considerations, analyses and conclusions. The aim will be to publish all material quickly. We will follow the principles of FOI. Our scheme is that all submissions relevant to our remit will be published as soon as practicable on the Website.[…] [emphasis added hro]

Who can submit evidence to the Review and how?[…]

Anyone is welcome to make a relevant submission to the Review, but we expect they are most likely to be made by people or organisations with scientific or professional expertise. We will not accept a submission which is not relevant to our remit.

We will publish all relevant submissions with the name of the author(s). We will adhere to the conditions of the Data Protection Act in holding back personal details.

We will not accept anonymous submissions or submissions which come with a condition of anonymity.

I didn’t see any fine-print (or ambiguous statements) which would preclude any submission from being published elsewhere. So it would appear that their intent really is to be transparent – and open. They would look very silly not publishing (or ignoring) any relevant submissions, don’t you think?

There was one somewhat curious paragaph:

What fees are you paying to the Review team?

The University of East Anglia is being paid for by the University of East Anglia. They have offered to pay the normal daily rates for academics of this standing

The bad news: (Other than the dearth of informative links, as Lucy noted above) Media enquiries are directed to a person at Luther Pendragon, a company that does “Media Relations, Public Affairs, Issues & Crisis, Stakeholder & Community Engagement […]” Excerpts from the last of these:

Luther Pendragon has a wide range of experience of stakeholder and community engagement. The team has developed and implemented inspiring high profile public social marketing campaigns, […]

[…]

Luther also offers an expert understanding and practical knowledge of corporate responsibility communications. In practice that means we develop and advise on communication strategies and campaigns on environmental, social and ethical issues from climate change to human rights.

Given Muir’s association with Indroba and Scottish Power, together with his allegiance to the RSE association and his obvious Mandarin background he hardly seems an appropriate “Team” leader, unless one is looking for a whitewash, which I feel is inevitable. A few slapped wrists for minor misdemeanours and then “get on with it boys”. Surely if UAE is employing him, they will be fairly comfortable with the conclusions they expect him to reach.

From Grypho’s post on Sean Hannity’s forum.

Quote ….Sir Muir Russell’s direct ties to, and vested interests in, “green energy” companies, can they be considered a conflict of interest of any kind? What about his allegiance to the RSE (Royal Society of Edinburgh), which not only completely endorses warmist claims, but is now launching a full scale “inquiry” (the exact word used) entitled “Facing Up To Climate Change”:

“The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) has launched its next major inquiry, Facing up to Climate Change. A multi-disciplinary group of experts will look into the gap between the policies necessary to deal with climate change and what the public will currently accept.”

“The science that indicates that climate change is resulting from greenhouse gas emissions is well established, with the only real uncertainty being the scale of the future changes. Even if an ambitious international settlement can be achieved at the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, Scotland will need to adapt to the climate change that is already inevitable.”

Whatever the case, I’m sure Sir Muir will be particularly well positioned and suited to employ some kind of trick to help the CRU hide the decline in public trust. (and of course, by trick I only mean “a good way to solve a problem” – and by decline I only mean the extreme “divergence problem” of public opinion and trust)
snip

I see that advice is to be sought from the Royal Society on suitable scientists to provide advice on scientific issues. I also saw the recent letter to the Daily Telegraph signed by various distinguished Lords (do any of them know what they are talking about?) , including the President of the Royal Society Martin Rees, who attest that the evidence for man-made global warming is “overwhelming”, notwithstanding IPCCgate and UEAgate etc. Lord Rees is on repeatedly on record expressing such opinions not least to Ed Miliband, who prays them in aid in condemning climate skeptics as “flat earthers”.

Seeking advice from the Royal Society in this context is like asking Dracula about blood-bank security. Stand by for a whitewash, I think.

This is an email I received after making a voluntary submission from the public(me).

“Sir/Madam
Many thanks for your email to the independent Climate Change Email Review. All emails will be read and eventually published by the Review.
If relevant to the Review remit, your email will be considered as a submission by the Review team.
Where possible we will try to respond to questions raised, though the volume of emails received means that this may take time.

With best wishes
The independent Climate Change Email Review team”

It was on reading this that it came to me that if they insist on keeping Boulton we should boycott the Muir Russell Inquiry. A number of those who would have submitted should make public statements that we are having nothing to do with it. They’ve had the emails since 3 Dec 09. They never bothered to contact Steve or Ross (or I assume anyone else who could have really shed light) before starting this farce, the day after the Commons Select Committee deadline ended. They have already hopelessly compromised themselves. We should make it clear that we’re not interested. Go back to the Phil Willis’ select committee on Science and Technology and argue the case from there. At least those guys were once elected.